As an avowed atheist living among a sea of believers (both locally and on the Internet), I have spent a lot of time discussing my beliefs (or lack thereof, as the case may be). The purpose of this blog is not to prove the non-existence of God or "de-convert" anybody from their faith, but simply to preserve some of these discussions and allow me to flesh them out through the process of writing them down, as well as to share them with anybody who might be interested in reading them.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Analogies Are Not Arguments

Life
is like a birdbath. It's made of concrete, filled with water, and
uh...birds like to splash in it. Boy, that was dumb. Life isn't anything
like a bird bath…

I have noticed a
recent trend here on Quora (although it has probably been going on
since time immemorial) whereby theists try to prove the existence of God
(or, at the very least, justify why it’s rational to believe in God)
through the awesome power of analogy. Some examples of this are the
following:

"You can't see the air, but you know its around. Same goes for God."

"You can't see electricity but you know it's around. Same goes for God."

The
thing is, though, is that these are not actually arguments and are
instead just analogies. Analogies are wonderful things in that they make
it easier to explain and understand complex subjects. But analogies
don’t actually prove anything or provide evidence of anything and are
really only useful if both of the following are true:

The underlying concept the analogy is seeking to explain is actually a true concept to begin with.

The analogy is actually a good
one, meaning that the comparison it makes is actually relevant (see the
Garfield comic shown above for an example of a bad analogy).

The various “God” analogies described above fail for both of these reasons. First of all, they assume
that God exists instead of offering any evidence to that effect and
then expect the analogy to somehow convince people to accept that
assumption. If you can’t first demonstrate that God exists in the first
place, using an analogy to explain why His existence can’t be detected
doesn’t really get you very far.

Second of all,
of course, they are simply bad analogies. For example, let’s look at
the “argument” that “you can’t see the air but you know it’s around”
(presumably meant to prove that the same is true of God and the fact
that we can’t see Him doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist). Let’s see how well
our knowledge of air stacks up against theists’ supposed knowledge of
God:

We primarily know about air based on the writings of
people who lived thousands of years ago, just like theists primarily
know about God based on the writings of people who lived thousands of
years ago. Oh, wait — that’s not true.

We mostly know
that air exists because people claimed to have actually seen it
thousands of years ago, even though it’s completely invisible today,
just like people claimed to see and talk with God thousands of years ago
even though nobody sees him today. Oh, wait — that’s not true.

We
have hundreds of different, often conflicting, descriptions today of
what air actually is and how it acts, just like theists throughout the
world and throughout history have hundreds (if not thousands) of
different, often conflicting, descriptions of what God actually is and
how He acts. Oh, wait — that’s not true.

We are
completely unable to detect air via any scientific instruments
whatsoever and therefore have to accept its existence purely on faith,
just like theists are completely unable to detect God via any scientific
instruments and therefore have to accept His existence purely on faith.
Oh, wait — that’s not true.

Although we can occasionally detect the effect air has on the rest of the world, we can’t do so in any sort of consistent manner
since “air moves in mysterious ways.” So, sometimes when we blow into a
balloon it inflates, but other times it doesn’t. And sometimes when we
inhale the air fills our lungs, but other times it just refuses to
enter. This is just like how theists are unable to consistently detect
the effect God has on the rest of the world since “God moves in
mysterious ways.” So, sometimes He heals people who pray for healing,
but other times He doesn’t. It’s exactly the same. Oh, wait — that’s not true.

So, yeah. Not a particularly good analogy, sorry, and definitely not any sort of argument (valid, sound or otherwise).